Table Of ContentAutonomy of Migration?
Examining how migrants appropriate mobility in the context of biometric
border controls, this volume mobilises new analytics and empirics in the de-
bates about the politics of migration and provides an analytically effective
and politically significant tool for the study of contemporary migration.
Drawing from the tension between the EU’s attempt to achieve watertight
border controls by means of biometric technologies, and migrants’ persis-
tence to move to and live in the EU, the volume pursues two interrelated
objectives: first, it studies the encounters between migrants and the Visa In-
formation System (VIS), one of the largest biometric databases in the world,
from the perspective of mobility in order to investigate how migrants appro-
priate mobility via Schengen visa within and against this biometric border
regime. Second, it addresses criticisms of autonomy of migration in order
to develop it as a viable approach for border, migration and critical security
studies. Hence, the book is driven by two interrelated research questions:
what does the assertion of moments of autonomy of migration refer to in the
context of border regimes that use biometrics to turn migrants’ bodies into
a means of mobility control? And how do migrants appropriate mobility via
Schengen visa within and against biometric border regimes?
This book will be of great interest to scholars in border, migration and
critical security studies, as well as researchers engaged in citizenship studies,
surveillance studies, political theory, critical IR theory and international
political sociology.
Stephan Scheel is working as an assistant professor at the sociology
department of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. He was
previously a researcher on the project ‘ARITHMUS – How Data Make a
People’ at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK. Stephan holds a PhD
from the Department for Politics and International Studies at the Open
University in Milton Keynes. His thesis has been awarded the Michael
Nicholson Thesis Prize of the British International Studies Association
(BISA) in 2015.
Interventions
The Series provides a forum for innovative and interdisciplinary work that
engages with alternative critical, post-structural, feminist, postcolonial,
psychoanalytic and cultural approaches to international relations and
global politics. In our first 5 years we have published 60 volumes.
We aim to advance understanding of the key areas in which scholars
working within broad critical post-structural traditions have chosen to
make their interventions, and to present innovative analyses of important
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ogy, politics and other disciplines and provide situated historical, empirical
and textual studies in international politics.
We are very happy to discuss your ideas at any stage of the project: just
contact us for advice or proposal guidelines. Proposals should be submitted
directly to the Series Editors:
• Jenny Edkins ([email protected]) and
• Nick Vaughan-Williams ([email protected]).
‘As Michel Foucault has famously stated, “knowledge is not made for under-
standing; it is made for cutting” In this spirit The Edkins - Vaughan- Williams
Interventions series solicits cutting edge, critical works that challenge main-
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affirm the world recycled in IR’s traditional geopolitical imaginary.’
Michael J. Shapiro, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, USA
Edited by Jenny Edkins, Aberystwyth University and Nick Vaughan-
Williams, University of Warwick
Autonomy of Migration?
Appropriating Mobility within Biometric Border Regimes
Stephan Scheel
The Anarchist Imagination
Anarchism Encounters the Humanities and Social Sciences
Carly Levy and Saul Newman
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com
Autonomy of Migration?
Appropriating Mobility within Biometric
Border Regimes
Stephan Scheel
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2019 Stephan Scheel
The right of Stephan Scheel to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Scheel, Stephan, author.
Title: Autonomy of migration? : appropriating mobility within
biometric border regimes / Stephan Scheel.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018055467 (print) | LCCN 2019003866 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781315269030 (eBook) | ISBN 9781138285361 (hbk) |
ISBN 9781315269030 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Immigration enforcement—European Union
countries. | Visas—Government policy—European Union countries. |
Border security—Technological innovations—European Union
countries. | Biometric identification—Government policy—
European Union countries.
Classification: LCC JV7590 (ebook) |
LCC JV7590 .S33 2019 (print) | DDC 325.4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055467
ISBN: 9781138285361 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781315269030 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra
Dedicated to Ayoub, Hissam, Kelly (and all the people who have
to struggle against bordering practices implied by the national
order of things)
Contents
List of figures ix
List of tables xi
List of abbreviations xiii
Acknowledgements xv
Permissions xix
Introduction 1
1 Biometric rebordering revisited: beyond the control bias
and policy gaps 18
2 Autonomy of migration within biometric border regimes? 42
3 Rethinking the autonomy of migration:
rethinking autonomy 75
4 Deconstructing the trickster narrative: the visa regime
as an unpredictable regime of institutionalised distrust 112
5 At the consulate: appropriating mobility within and
against biometric border regimes 136
6 Encounters at the airport: embarrassing performances
of sovereign power 157
7 Rendering Europe a vast borderzone: on the irreducible
ambivalence of migrants’ practices of appropriation 182
Conclusion: autonomy of migration reloaded 209
Index 225
List of figures
6.1 Copy of leaflet attached with sticky tape to counter of
border check posts at airport X (Chapter 6) 161
